Fragile States of Mind
by Swanling
Summary: The adventures of five demigods who were on Kronos's side during the war. Their life on the Princess Andromeda, their lives before, and the war itself. History may be written by the winners, but the losers have their own stories too. Set during The Last Olympian.
1. The Last Night

**"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." -Edmund Burke**

On what felt like the last night of our lives we had a beach party. There was a bonfire, we roasted marshmallows, a couple half-bloods got drunk on spiked ambrosia, and in the morning when the flames had died down and the coals had turned gray we packed up and headed towards New York.

I remember leaning over the side of the Princess Andromeda, watching the sea spray dance back and forth below. Monsters and demi-gods alike paced back and forth on the deck anticipating the coming battle, but I just watched the waves crash again and again into the side of the boat. It's kind of hard to find comfort in thinking about death, so instead I tried to focus on what I would do after the war. Kyla had made me two promises the night before, and honestly the only thing I wanted at that moment was for them to come true.

"Hey Lander." I glanced up to see Kyla leaning on the railing next to me. She wasn't looking down below or at me, but instead was squinting up at the sky.

The wind was whipping her short purple hair back and forth, and it kept getting in the way of her eyes. Her skin looked even more pale in the gloomy morning, and for a split second it was hard to imagine her as the same girl I had met months ago when I first boarded the Princess Andromeda. Then she finally looked my way and flashed me a carefree smile that lit up her entire face.

"Hi Kyla," I murmured.

Cocking her head forward she seemed to scrutinize my face. "You okay?"

I nodded briefly, making sure not to meet her eyes. Sighing she leaned her forearms against the wooden railing, as if she just couldn't wait to be off the ship and on land. "We'll be in New York soon, and then once that's over we've still got that deal."

"Serenity and Pringles."

"You, me, Alene, Damon, and Rickie. It might just be the best day of our lives."

"I don't think that anything could beat last night."

Kyla laughed, and her laugh echoed endlessly against the metal of the ship. "That might be true, but you'll be surprised how much the relief of being alive can make an already good movie even more enjoyable."

"Last night was still epic."

"I guess you did make-out with Delilah, which was more enjoyable for you. I don't think it would have helped for me." Kyla scrunched her nose. "She's not really my type, too bitchy and whiny."

Stepping away from the railing I turned away from her. "Thanks Kyla."

"Lander," she called after me, her voice sounding consoling but not apologetic. "I was just joking. You know that I just want what's best for you, and I don't want you to like a girl just because you think you won't get another chance."

"Well I might not considering I'm probably going to die in a few days time."

I heard her sigh and could almost imagine her rolling her eyes. "Lander, please don't do this again. I know-"

"Meeting right now," Alene interrupted as she brushed right in between us.

Kyla shifted her focus from me and raised her eyebrow. "What about?" Kyla and Damon were probably the only half-bloods onboard who were brave enough to question Alene.

"Teen lounge," she snapped, obviously not interested in continuing what she already considered a finished conversation.

Alene looked exhausted, even more than usual. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and her clothes were disheveled and rumpled. Ringed with black circles her eyes seemed to glare out at everything and everyone. Her right hand seemed to be subconsciously rubbing the butterfly tattoo on her left wrist, though both of her arms were completely covered in greek sharpie writing.

"Maybe you should take a break Alene. You look kind of worked up right now."

Without another word Alene stomped away and disappeared below deck. Kyla shrugged and cast a glance towards a few monsters who were standing nearby. "C'mon Lander, this sounds possibly important."

Walking along the winding hallways and corridors of the cruiseship was still confusing for me, even though I'd spent months living here. The carpeting and walls onboard the ships were chewed up and covered in claw marks which some of the other demigods had complained about, but there's really no way to avoid it considering the amount of monsters onboard the ship.

As I followed behind Kyla and dwelled on that, I found myself lost in other thoughts until a figure jumped on me from behind.

"WAGHHHH!"

"Sorry Lander!" Rickie took a step back, but was still grinning widely. His blonde hair was in a messy array, and out of everyone I had seen that day he seemed to be the most energetic. He might have only been two years younger than me, but everyone treated him like the pet.

Kyla was laughing again. "I wouldn't suggest trying that on Alene. She's kind of in the mood where she'll stab you if you look at her in the wrong way."

Rickie fell easily into step behind us. "Yeah, well she's always kind of like that."

"You'd think she'd be in a better mood from last night. She and Damon were getting along okay," I said quietly.

"Things have always been complicated between them," Kyla mused thoughtfully.

"I don't know, but I thought last night was pretty awesome!" Rickie was practically bouncing up and down. His was wearing his bright pink backpack that he never seemed to part from, and for a moment I could almost see him as just a kid living a carefree and happy life.

"Mmhm," Kyla said. "We're headed towards a meeting in the lounge by the way."

"Oh yeah, I was going to ask you guys about it. Alene came and got me a couple of minutes ago, but she didn't tell me anything about it."

"She didn't tell us anything either," I said with a sigh. No matter what, Alene always seemed to be in a bad mood. She acted like it was herself against the rest of the world, and everything and nothing seemed to frustrate her.

Rickie shrugged, obviously not interested. His ADHD combined with his natural energeticness gave him a very short attention span on any subject that didn't immediately pique his interest.

Kyla stopped in front of one of the doors, and pressed her ear against the cold wood. A frown flickered across her face. "Wait out here for a few seconds guys." Casting a quick glance down the hallway to see if anybody else was nearby, she slipped into the teen lounge shutting the door immediately behind her.

Shrugging I sat down on the carpet next to Rickie. Under normal circumstances I would protest to being left out of things, but things in the teen lounge could get out of hand pretty quickly. On my first week onboard I had been challenged to a death match before the meeting had even started, so I guess you could say I didn't have the fondest memories of the demigod's chosen meeting place on the Andromeda.

"You've heard the rumors, right?"

I cast a doubtful glance towards Rickie. "What?"

He grinned, fiddling with a few of the key chains that were attached to his backpack. "Percy Jackson."

I froze in shock. I could feel my heartbeat speed up as I struggled to remain level-headed. Percy Jackson was a name that I had heard far too often in the past months, and never seen. At times it had felt like he was the center of everything, the pivoting point of the entire war. He was the heart of our enemy, and if you stab the heart, they die.

"What is it?"

"He's coming. Percy Jackson is coming to the Andromeda."


	2. Inharmony

Alene and Ethan were having a full out screaming argument in the middle of the lounge. The rest of the demigods were scattered around on the perimeter of the room either talking quietly, listening intently, or snacking on various junk food items spread out on tables.

Damon sat slouched on a chair near one of the windows, gazing boredly at Seth and Paxton who were taking turns throwing darts at the board. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was a mess, but he seemed relatively calm compared to many of the other demigods. Kyla sat on the armchair next to him, inspecting her nails while occasionally looking up to see if anyone else walked in through the door.

"SCREW YOU!" Alene hurled a knife at Ethan who deftly dodged it, where it lodged straight into one of the panels on the walls.

"Yes, because that's definitely going to solve our problems. Hurling knives at walls has always worked out so well in the past!"

"I don't care Ethan. If you don't fix this, we're all going to die and it will be your fault."

"Why are you acting like I have any choice in this matter?!"

"You could do something other than follow Kronos around worshipping his every single movement and nodding at everything he says!"

As Alene and Ethan continued to scream at each other, I cast a quick glance towards Rickie who was sitting next to me on the floor. Since we had already been in here for awhile watching demigods threaten and throw things at each other, a pile of empty Pringles cans had begun to accumulate next to him. At that moment he was fishing around again in his backpack, his eyebows furrowed in concentration.

"Hey, Rickie."

"Yeah?"

"Where did you get your backpack from?"

Suddenly a huge grin lit up his face as he looked up. "Do you really want to know?"

"No, I don't want to know. That's why I asked." I rolled my eyes, trying to keep myself from getting annoyed and saying something harsh.

Rickie smiled, seeming to be completely oblivious to my sarcasm. "I stole it from a homeless guy when I was seven while I was on my way home."

There was a pause, as I sat there staring blankly at him and his backpack. Usually by now I would respond with some sort of cutting remark seeing as there were a lot of things weird about what he just said, but lately I had just gotten to the point where I was so exhausted that I couldn't even be surprised.

"You see, there was this homeless guy sitting on a bench, and he had this bright pink backpack right next to him. So when he looked the other way I just grabbed it and ran. It wasn't hard at all."

I let out a huge long sigh. Staring up at the ceiling, I tried to imagine that I was back at the beach, not hearing about how Rickie apparently spent his childhood stealing things from hoboes.

"It's a really cool backpack, actually. It's like time-lord magic, bigger on the inside, you know what I mean?"

"No."

"Like, I don't put things in it. Objects just show up in it from nowhere, and then they eventually disappear. Also it's awesome because the backpack doesn't like rip, burn, or ever get wet. I don't think you could hurt it if you tried."

"So you steal a backpack from a homeless guy, it's magical and just fills up with random things, it's virtually indestructible, and throughout all of this you never even think, 'Hmm, this is a little weird.' "

Rickie shrugged, not bothered by any of the logical things I had just said. "It had my name on it. Once I had gotten far enough away I inspected the outside of it, and I found my name written in Greek on the bottom of it." Without missing a beat he flipped the bookbag over to where his name was indeed written in greek with perfect handwriting.

As I opened my mouth to respond, a dart whizzed dangerously close to my head and I had to hit the ground to avoid being hit.

"Hey, sorry Lander," Damon drawled. Seth and Paxton snickered together, though I couldn't tell whether it was at me or Damon's poor dart-throwing skills which hadn't even come close to hitting the target.

Alene who had otherwise been ignoring everything else that had been going on in the room whirled around, her eyes glowing with anger. "Could you shut-up Damon, and at least pretend that you care about anything that is actually going on around you?"

At first it looked like he was going to ignore her challenges like he usually did, but then he seemed to think better of it. "Neither of you are saying anything important, so no, I don't see any need for me to be quiet."

"If you even knew a single thing about what we were talking about, then I'm sure that your imbecilic brain would be able to realize that it's important. So will you shut up now?"

Damon's eyes flashed. "How about you stop acting like a bitch? We all get the jist. Percy is coming, Kronos wants to let him blow up the cruise ship and escape, and you're just throwing a fit because apparently the whole war should be about your own stupid problems against Camp Half-Blood and the gods. Kyla and I were there with you, so why can't you just fucking move on?"

There was a tense silence. The entire room sat frozen, not daring to even draw a breath. Even Rickie who was usually unaffected by any serious mood was sitting frozen in shock. As a general rule, you didn't piss off Alene. You tried to stay on her bad side as little as possible, and you never brought up anything about her past.

The seconds dragged by, until Kyla slowly stood up. "Alene, Ethan might have some points. If we did let Percy destroy the Andromeda it would give the gods a false sense of security. It would be even easier then to-"

"Will you ever grow up Kyla, and stop acting so naive and moronic?" Alene's words resonated harshly and clearly across the room. Then she was gone, slamming the door of the lounge behind her. The wall shook from the force of it, and all of the half-bloods flinched.

We were mostly used to Alene storming out of meetings and yelling at us, but it was always the most difficult when it was Damon and Kyla who were the ones she was upset at. At other times they could be depended upon to reason with her and keep everyone's sanity under check, but when they couldn't it felt like the ground had been ripped out from underneath us.

Callie who was sitting near Seth and Paxton was the first one to get up and head towards Kyla. Touching her lightly on the shoulder she murmured a few things, and then left. Seth and Paxton followed after her along with Ethan, and slowly the meeting began to dissolve.  
Sighing, Kyla pressed her fingers against her right temple as if she had a headache. I watched her close her eyes as if she was trying to refocus, and for the first time I began to realize how much the war was affecting everyone.

"Damon, go talk to her."

Without even giving an affirmative response he stood up to leave, but not before stopping to give her a quick hug.

"Love you." Then he walked out, leaving just me, Kyla, and Rickie.

Taking a quick glance at Rickie to see how he was reacting now, it didn't surprise me to see him reaching his hand in his backpack looking for something. After a few seconds he pulled out what looked like a photograph, and handed it to Kyla. She looked at it only briefly before folding it and putting it in her pocket.

"You guys should head up to the cafeteria. I'll be up later." Her voice was quiet and level, which was a lot different than her usually bubbly and self-confident tone.

Nodding quietly, Rickie turned towards the door and left.

The teen lounge was a mess. Trash, empty wrappers, overturned furniture, and a few random weapons were laying out everywhere. Bright light continued to stream in through the windows, which only served to further illuminate how awful everything looked. There were cracks in the walls and the carpet was stained, but as I walked out the last image that stuck in my mind was Kyla standing alone in the center of the room with her back to me, looking out into the endless ocean.


End file.
